Which one should we be on, Webflow or Framer?

Framer tends to be faster to build and cheaper to run, and it is very strong for marketing sites with moderate content needs, so it usually wins on smaller budgets. Webflow gives more control over complex layouts and a deeper content system, which matters once you have several related content types feeding into each other. We recommend one after seeing the content structure, not before, because that is the part that actually differs.

Is there a monthly cost, and does it ever stop?

Yes, and no. These platforms host the site themselves, so there is a per-site subscription for as long as the site is live, and it is separate from your domain. It is stated in the proposal with the actual figure before you commit. It is a real advantage in exchange — no server to maintain, no plugin updates, no security patching — but it is an ongoing cost and you should decide with that in view rather than discover it later.

What happens if we want to move off the platform in two years?

This is the honest limitation and it belongs in the first conversation, not the last. The visual design can be exported as static files, but the content system does not come out as a working structure you can drop into another platform. In practice, moving means rebuilding the front end. If you can foresee your own engineering team wanting to own the codebase later, we should discuss a different route now rather than have that conversation after a funding round.

Can our team add blog posts and projects without breaking the design?

That is the main reason to build this way. Repeating content lives in collections with defined fields, and each entry renders through a template that keeps the design consistent regardless of what is typed in. Someone adding their two-hundredth project gets the same layout as the first. The training video we record covers your actual collections rather than a generic tutorial, including what happens with an unusually long title or a missing image.

How much animation is a good idea?

Less than these platforms make it tempting to add. Motion works when it directs attention or explains a transition. Once every section fades and slides in, the page feels slow, content arrives late for anyone skim-reading, and it becomes actively unpleasant for visitors who are sensitive to motion. We build with a small motion vocabulary applied consistently, and respect the operating-system setting for reduced motion.

Can you work from designs our own designer produced?

Yes, and it usually shortens the project. We would ask for the working design file rather than exported images, and for the mobile layouts as well as desktop — a build from desktop-only designs means someone makes the responsive decisions during construction, and it is better if that someone is your designer. Where a design element would be disproportionately expensive to reproduce on the platform, we will say so and propose an alternative rather than quietly approximate it.

Web Development & Engineering

A designed site on Webflow or Framer, with a CMS you will not outgrow

Premium visual design, restrained motion, and a content structure modelled on your business so your team can publish for years without calling anyone.

From: $800–$3,500
Typical time: 1–3 weeks
Usually bought by: Startups, agencies

What this actually solves

You are buying this work because you care about how the thing looks, and you care for a commercial reason rather than a vain one. You are a studio, a consultancy, an agency or a young company where the first impression is a substantial part of the sale. Your audience judges credibility partly on craft, and a site that looks templated undercuts a pitch about quality before anyone reads a word.

The second thing you want is independence. You have usually lived through a site where changing a paragraph meant emailing a developer and waiting three days, or a platform where every update carried a small risk of something breaking. You want to publish a new case study on the morning it is signed off, from a browser, without a deployment and without a support ticket.

These platforms fit that pair of requirements unusually well. The design freedom is close to what you would get building from scratch, the hosting and security are handled by the platform, and the content system is genuinely usable by people who do not think of themselves as technical. The trade is a monthly subscription and a meaningful degree of commitment to the platform — which is a good bargain for most marketing sites, and a bad one for a company that expects to build its own engineering team. Knowing which of those you are is the first real decision in the project.

What we do, and in what order

Model the content before designing anything. The single most consequential hour of this project. What repeats — case studies, team members, services, blog posts, awards — what fields each one carries, and how they relate to each other. Whether a category is an option on a project or a collection in its own right sounds like a technical detail and is not: it determines whether you can have a page listing every residential project in a given city, or cannot. Restructuring this after a hundred entries exist is expensive, so it is settled first. Half a day to a day.
Design, or adapt the design you already have. Key pages designed to a real typographic and spacing system rather than page by page, so the twentieth page still looks like it belongs to the first. Mobile layouts are decided here, not improvised during the build. Two to five days.
Build the structure, then the pages. Collections and templates first, so that a single case-study layout serves every case study, then the standalone pages on top. Each page is opened on a real phone as it is finished. Three to seven days.
Add motion, deliberately and sparingly. A small set of transitions applied consistently — one entrance behaviour, one hover behaviour, one page transition — rather than a different effect per section. Reduced-motion preferences are respected, and anything that delays the appearance of text is reconsidered, because a visitor scrolling quickly should never be reading empty space. One to two days.
Forms, SEO settings, and the domain. Form submissions tested end to end into your real inbox, notification recipients confirmed, per-page titles and descriptions written, social sharing images set, sitemap enabled, custom domain connected with the correct redirects. One day.
Training and handover. Your own workspace where possible, so the site is under your account rather than ours. A recorded walkthrough covering how to add an entry to each of your collections, what each field does, and which things to leave alone. Half a day.

What moves the price

The range is $800–$3,500 and the build runs 1–3 weeks. Three things move both.

Where the design comes from. Arriving with a finished design system and mobile layouts makes this a build job. Designing from scratch is a design job plus a build job, and it is the largest variable in the quote.

How deep the content structure goes. One blog collection is quick. Five interlinked collections with references between them, filtered listing pages and multiple template layouts is substantially more work, and it is work that pays for itself every week afterwards in what your team can do unaided.

How much motion the site carries. Considered motion on a handful of key moments is inexpensive. A site where every section has bespoke scroll-linked behaviour is a different project, needs testing across far more devices, and takes proportionally longer to get right at small screen sizes.

What usually goes wrong

The collection structure is built to match today's design. Fields get named after where they appear rather than what they are, and a project gets a field for the text in a particular box on the homepage. Six months later the homepage is redesigned, that box no longer exists, and the field is stranded — meaningless to whoever inherits it and awkward to remove. Content structure should describe your business, not your current layout.

The ongoing platform cost and the exit route are never spelled out. You find out about the subscription from a renewal notice, and about the migration difficulty at the worst possible moment — usually once you have hired your own engineers and expect to bring the site under your own control. Both facts belong in writing on day one. Being straightforward about it costs no work at all and prevents the specific feeling of having been trapped, which is what ends otherwise good client relationships.

Motion is used as decoration rather than direction. Every section fades up, elements stagger in, images parallax, and the cumulative effect is a site that feels slower than a plainer one and is genuinely difficult for anyone with vestibular sensitivity. It also tends to be tuned on a fast laptop and never re-checked on a mid-range phone, where the same effects stutter. Motion earns its place by guiding attention, and anything that does not do that gets removed.

See where the site stands before you brief anyone.

If the site is already live, start from what it scores rather than from a guess. The audit reports what it checked, what it found, and — the part most tools leave out — what it could not check, and why.

See the website audit Talk about this work

Questions people ask before they commit.

Which one should we be on, Webflow or Framer?: Framer tends to be faster to build and cheaper to run, and it is very strong for marketing sites with moderate content needs, so it usually wins on smaller budgets. Webflow gives more control over complex layouts and a deeper content system, which matters once you have several related content types feeding into each other. We recommend one after seeing the content structure, not before, because that is the part that actually differs.
Is there a monthly cost, and does it ever stop?: Yes, and no. These platforms host the site themselves, so there is a per-site subscription for as long as the site is live, and it is separate from your domain. It is stated in the proposal with the actual figure before you commit. It is a real advantage in exchange — no server to maintain, no plugin updates, no security patching — but it is an ongoing cost and you should decide with that in view rather than discover it later.
What happens if we want to move off the platform in two years?: This is the honest limitation and it belongs in the first conversation, not the last. The visual design can be exported as static files, but the content system does not come out as a working structure you can drop into another platform. In practice, moving means rebuilding the front end. If you can foresee your own engineering team wanting to own the codebase later, we should discuss a different route now rather than have that conversation after a funding round.
Can our team add blog posts and projects without breaking the design?: That is the main reason to build this way. Repeating content lives in collections with defined fields, and each entry renders through a template that keeps the design consistent regardless of what is typed in. Someone adding their two-hundredth project gets the same layout as the first. The training video we record covers your actual collections rather than a generic tutorial, including what happens with an unusually long title or a missing image.
How much animation is a good idea?: Less than these platforms make it tempting to add. Motion works when it directs attention or explains a transition. Once every section fades and slides in, the page feels slow, content arrives late for anyone skim-reading, and it becomes actively unpleasant for visitors who are sensitive to motion. We build with a small motion vocabulary applied consistently, and respect the operating-system setting for reduced motion.
Can you work from designs our own designer produced?: Yes, and it usually shortens the project. We would ask for the working design file rather than exported images, and for the mobile layouts as well as desktop — a build from desktop-only designs means someone makes the responsive decisions during construction, and it is better if that someone is your designer. Where a design element would be disproportionately expensive to reproduce on the platform, we will say so and propose an alternative rather than quietly approximate it.

Often taken together.

Start with the brief, not the invoice.

Send what you are trying to achieve. You get a written scope, a price and a date — or an honest “this is not the right service for that”.

Talk about Webflow / Framer site All Web Development & Engineering services